Draw the line Campaign

The ‘Draw the line’ campaign has been launched to support, guide and enable managers to have open conversations locally about raising concerns. The campaign is being delivered by NHS Employers as part of their wider programme of work commissioned by NHS England on Compassion in Practice.

Target audience

• All NHS managers and staff

• HR directors

• Communications managers

• Recruitment managers

Draw the line toolkit for managers

Over the last two years, NHS Employers has been proactively involved in the various reviews, inquiries, and consultations, with the key aim of providing an employers' perspective and identifying where they can assist in supporting employers to foster a culture of learning and improvement. As part of their extensive engagement, managers said they needed more support and practical guidance to help them deal with the issues and complexities they are all too often faced with, when staff raise concerns with them.

As part of the Draw the line campaign a range of new on-line resources have been introduced which are intended to help facilitate engagement between managers and the board, senior teams, wider management teams and staff, about the importance of raising concerns. In particular, they are intended to help employers consider and address some of the key issues highlighted in the Freedom to Speak Up report.

The new resources include:

A self-assessment tool which organisations can use to temperature gauge how effective local policies and procedures are, using information from the NHS Staff survey, local staff survey, or other information obtained in their engagement with staff, patients and the public.

A managers’ guide which outlines key considerations when dealing with concerns.

An outline presentation and how to use guide with useful national information and statistics to present to the board and senior teams.

Our campaign logo which can be used to drive local campaign activity. Please feel free to use the Draw the line logo to drive any local communications or activity related to raising the profile and understanding of raising concerns in the workplace.